{"id":643847,"date":"2026-05-01T15:56:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T13:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=643847"},"modified":"2026-05-01T19:00:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T17:00:34","slug":"south-africas-most-iconic-holiday-resort-gets-autonomous-drones-to-protect-guests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/gadgets\/643847-south-africas-most-iconic-holiday-resort-gets-autonomous-drones-to-protect-guests.html","title":{"rendered":"South Africa’s most iconic holiday resort gets autonomous drones to protect guests"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Security group Fidelity ADT has launched a new drone dock on the roof of The Palace of the Lost City, Sun City’s most luxurious hotel and resort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From this dock, Fidelity’s autonomous DJI aerial drones will launch and provide live surveillance and enhanced operational visibility to the resort’s security efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a LinkedIn post,<\/a> Fidelity called the launch of Dock 3 “a significant step forward in advancing smarter, faster, and more responsive security through autonomous drone operations.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“As one of South Africa’s most iconic destinations, Sun City Resort represents a powerful endorsement of cutting-edge, drone-led security solutions.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opened in 1979 by renowned South African business magnate Sol Kerzner, Sun City is arguably the most ambitious hospitality investment in the country’s history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to the opening of Sun City, Kerzner made a name for himself in the local hospitality industry by opening the Southern Sun chain of hotels across South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the 1980s, Southern Sun operated 30 luxury hotels with over 7,000 rooms. This success led Kerzner to envision a more secluded luxury resort near the Pilanesberg National Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The construction of the Sun City resort took place over a decade, including four hotels, a man-made lake, and two Gary Player-designed championship golf courses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Sun City included two 5-star hotels, The Palace of the Lost City is the resort’s crown jewel. The Palace cost R830 million to develop in 1992.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hotel’s garden alone cost R25 million at the time, and featured over 1.6 million plants. Over the years, the Palace has hosted numerous celebrities, including Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent years, Sun City’s reputation as South Africa’s top luxury resort has diminished somewhat. A combination of a stagnant economy and losses driven by Covid-19 negatively affected the resort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aggressive strike action and labour unrest experienced a decade ago also affected the resort, leading to major changes at The Palace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Sun International announced that it invested R400 million<\/a> into Sun City over the last two years, in hopes of reviving the iconic resort to its former glory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It is reassuring to see that those investments are starting to show some real results. Sun City performed really well in the second half of the year,” said Sun International CEO Ulrik Bengtsson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As betting moves away from casinos and towards mobile phones in South Africa, Sun International began positioning Sun City away from gambling and towards family hospitality as the main revenue driver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the casino attraction remained, and a portion of the R400 million investment was allocated to improving it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When we did an analysis of our land-based casinos, it turned out that we had some real improvements to do in our operational model,” Bengtsson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This included how we train our staff and how we run our casino floors. We had to spend more time investing in what I call operational intensity.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fidelity’s autonomous security drones launching in Sun City<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Fidelity’s DJI drones are now taking off from the roof of the Palace, with a drone dock positioned beside the Palace’s roof-mounted solar panels, according to the LinkedIn post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This is more than a drone on a rooftop. It’s the introduction of an intelligent response asset capable of live surveillance, rapid aerial deployment, and enhanced operational visibility,” the company said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It added that the drone feeds data towards an integrated central command environment, where it is overseen and controlled by security personnel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2021, Fidelity began rolling out drones<\/a> in residential areas of South Africa, with an initial pilot project in the Fourways area of Johannesburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, the initial offer was for estates in the area and included a mobile command centre with a qualified drone pilot and a fully equipped state-of-the-art drone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The command centre is linked to a tactical response unit for both reactive and proactive purposes,” said Wahl Bartmann, Fidelity Services Group CEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Customers contact a call centre to activate the drone response, and on sites where Fidelity ADT already provides guarding, the drone response will be worked into the incident escalation procedure.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that the deployment of drone technology would increase proactive crime prevention and enhance the ability to plan crime-prevention operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Drones can also play an important role in other emergency situations that require monitoring, such as dangerous fires and land invasions,” he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fidelity’s drone security services<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The Palace of the Lost City, Sun City<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Fidelity announced the launch of a new drone dock on the roof of The Palace at Sun City, providing autonomous aerial surveillance of the resort. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341213,"featured_media":643849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[31718,53513,104854,96867,63715,104852,90214,104851,38990,104853,61687],"class_list":["post-643847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gadgets","tag-adt","tag-dji-drone","tag-dji-drones","tag-drones-2","tag-fidelity","tag-palace-of-the-lost-city","tag-security-drone","tag-sol-kerzner","tag-sun-city","tag-ulrik-bengtsson","tag-wahl-bartmann"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643847"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643847"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":644819,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643847\/revisions\/644819"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}